Yes, Gay is a Choice. Get Over it

From Robert Oscar Lopez:

According to Peter Schmidt in the Chronicle of Higher Education, yet another individual working in higher education has been demolished for saying the wrong thing about homosexuality. The basis on which to define people as “anti-gay” has, however, taken a turn to the absurd (and eerie).

Unlike Angela McCaskill, who was nearly fired from Gallaudet University for signing a petition on gay marriage, Crystal Dixon of the University of Toledo was fired for writing an editorial in a local newspaper. She referred to Exodus and mentioned people who chose to leave the gay lifestyle.

For this column I will stick to the gay male angle, since I have but 1,200 words. Even if we accepted, for argument’s sake (which I do not accept), that McCaskill was “anti-gay” because she signed a petition, the case against Dixon is based purely on wild assumptions about sex. To fire Dixon, one must accept that gay men cannot stop themselves from having anal sex or engaging in fellatio. Without anal sex or fellatio, it would seem that a gay couple is tough to distinguish from roommates who like to kiss each other once in a while.

These assumptions bestialize and infantilize gay men. While I have tired of penning editorials about gay controversies, the situation is dire. I feel compelled to write a column once again emphasizing a basic reality: gay sex is a choice. Nobody lacks the power to refrain from having gay sex. Get. Over. It.

Dixon said that gays had the choice to leave the lifestyle (in other words, stop engaging in anal sex and fellatio). According to her detractors, such was tantamount to being anti-gay. Her detractors are following the lead of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists “conversion therapy” as a hate crime.

Scroll through the comments section of any article about these issues. You will see a roll call of gays and pro-gay supporters, issuing confident testimonials that nobody has ever changed from gay to straight. (It’s fine to change from straight to gay, according to these tribunes, because that’s simply coming out of the closet.) They allude, at various times, to Simon LeVay’s 1991 brain study or problematic decades-old research into identical twins, if not warped evolutionary logic from ideologues like David Barash or anecdotes about someone they know. The research has spoken! Anyone who says you can change your sexuality is a lying, right-wing bigot! To which I say the following:

Does anybody who uses the term LGBT remember the “B” in that God-forsaken acronym? Hello? There are bisexuals. I am one of them. Why include us in these categories if you think we don’t exist?

Dating and marriage don’t magically happen, like going to the bathroom or breathing. They take conscious choices — where do you hang out? What are you looking for? What type of partner shares your goals? Whether to hang out in gay clubs or straight clubs makes a huge difference; these are completely different cultures. We choose the life we want to live (or leave, for that matter).

Even gay men still choose which sex acts they commit. I hate to admit this, but I worked as a housekeeper in a gay sex club in Manhattan in the early 1990s, when I was desperate for work. I witnessed, literally, thousands of men having sex in the open, with me having to go clean up after them. Very rarely (thank the Lord) did they engage in anal sex.

I have known, personally, scores of gay male couples that barely have any sex at all after they have been together for a while. (They start preferring Monday Night Football and hitting the sack early.) A large portion of the sex club patrons came to watch and then went home. If “Gs” can choose what kind of sex to have, they can also choose not to have sex at all. It’s a choice.

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“If by the liberty of the press were understood merely the liberty of discussing the propriety of public measures and political opinions, let us have as much of it as you please: But if it means the liberty of affronting, calumniating and defaming one another, I, for my part, own myself willing to part with my share of it.” —Benjamin Franklin (1789)